


The base-string of humility

by Lilliburlero



Category: Henry IV Part 1 - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Class Differences, Drugs, M/M, Missing Scene, Oral Sex, Power Imbalance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 05:49:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5654728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Boar's Head doesn't have house rules exactly. But it does have, you know, sort of <i>guidelines</i>. And DON'T TAP THE TAPSTERS is near the top of the list. Hal, predictably, ignores it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The base-string of humility

**Author's Note:**

> [This conversation happened](http://prancy.tumblr.com/post/136670873845/lilliburlero-prancy-lilliburlero-prancy-cut). I don't think I actually explored any of the things that prancy/[disenchanted](https://archiveofourown.org/users/disenchanted/pseuds/disenchanted) suggests there, I just wrote Hal/Francis PWP in modern AU, Fortune forgive me. This was not meant to be my first fic of 2016.

The new barman is—lost for a word that isn’t utterly banal, Hal grunts private appreciation— _uhgn_ —for a jutting, busy arse in jeans that could stand to do it a few more favours, fat little pecs under a white t-shirt with an abstract design of lines, like, whatever they're called― _spillikins_ ―on it, its sleeves rolled up to display biceps of which their owner is obviously, forgivably proud. Hal orders a pint, some fucking real ale shite, _Doom Bar_ , whatever, twigs in it, to see them at best advantage, and the narrow mossy trail of hair creeping out of his armpit. It’s touching. Hal is _touched_ , which is his way of saying he’s bored and mildly randy. Ed’s not here. Ed is on some complicated Edly errand involving his kid sister, her lost phone, six screeching schoolgirls all called Lauren and multiple lifts from his mum’s flat to fucking Brent Cross or somewhere impossible. Jack’s not here. Jack is holed up somewhere concocting transparent, pathetic untruths about what went on this morning, which Hal will mercilessly rip the piss out of, until Jack’s eyes get rheumy and discoloured with hurt, at which point Hal will magnanimously forgive. One day he won’t forgive. But not today. He’s not that bored. Not yet.

The landlady, Will and Ralph are all in the big saloon bar, serving the afternoon crowd their carveries. Hal wonders why he even comes to this lousy barn. It reeks of gravy. This new guy’s on his own in the smaller ‘public’, and even though it’s only Hal and a few old-timers in here he’s not quite coping. _Hang on_ , he says softly and goes to fetch a new hanging card of Scampi Fries or clumsily change an optic. _Hang on_. Hal gets to like it, husky, a bit posher than you might expect for this dump, a perceptible aitch for starters, that hint of a lisp that some London accents have. _Hang on, hang on._ Hal starts catching his attention so he’ll say it, asking for something trivial each time. _Packet of Rizlas_. His dark, bulbous eyes are bloodshot. _Plain crisps._ There’s a familiar, faintly garlicky whiff off him. _Lend us a pen. Pass me that paper, mate. You got the time?_ That one’s pushing it, because there’s a bloody great Guinness clock on the panelling above Hal’s head, but he would have to lean back about 30 degrees to see it, and he can’t be bothered. 

The barman pulls his phone out of his hip pocket, bringing with it the resealable top of a small plastic bag. 

‘Twenty-five to five.’ 

‘Cheers.’ Hal pauses and leans in, out of earshot of―well, everything’s out of earshot of Ursula and her pals, anyway. ‘Cheeky, stoned on your first shift.’ 

‘I’ve been here two years. Kitchen porter.’ Well, that makes sense. Hal’s been a kitchen porter, or rather, he’s dressed up as one for about an hour, some stupid prank of Ed’s. But that was long enough to find out that they’re all buzzing out of their fucking trees _all the fucking time_. ‘I don’t usually work front of house, is all. Other bloke called in sick.’ Realising belatedly what he has not denied, he opts for a truculent pout. Hal is, once more, _touched_. 

Hal scratches the back of his neck, pretending to dislodge something from between his canine and eye-teeth with his tongue. ‘So―what time’s it finish, then, this―er, anomalous shift of yours?’ 

‘Six―six o’clock―’ His lips part as about 15 watts of uncertainty switch on behind his big brown eyes. 

Hal’s excited and determined now, but even he’s accustomed to it taking a bit more than a sidelong glance and a four-syllable word. Not exactly the sharpest tool―he lets the crappy unspoken pun issue in a dirty grin and reprises his appreciative grunt, audibly this time. The barman nods almost imperceptibly, eyes gorgeously wide and wary, and suddenly discovers that the fridge needs restocking. This, making those appalling jeans less than an entire offence to the eye, is an activity of which Hal can approve. 

At ten to six, he slides off the barstool and reaches for his jacket. Ursula’s plucking coins from her purse and laboriously lining them up on the bar to the value of a gin and orange. The barman’s eyes skitter rightwards. _Hang on_. 

‘Cheers―um?’ 

‘Francis.’ _Francis_. Fuck. Off. 

‘Francis―see you around sometime―’ Hal shrieks at Ursula-volume. 

‘But―’ 

Hal stares with incredulous deliberation at his hip pocket. Under cover of the most awkward handclasp ever exchanged outside the set of a sword-and-sandals movie, Francis passes over the bag. 

It’s fairly nice weed; not that much left. Hal _could_ just walk off with it, phone Ed, have a dim, stoned shag somewhere thoroughly ridiculous, like Ed’s sister’s bedroom. There’s certainly something obscurely titillating about getting sucked off with Tom Hiddleston’s wonky chops girning down at you from three walls. But there’s no novelty in it. He strolls round the back. It’s an overcast evening, mild and airless. The narrow accessway smells of old cooking fat and stale beer. He sits on the fire escape and skins up. At five past, the steel back door opens with a disappointed clunk. 

‘Oh, God.’ Francis’s voice sounds actually damp with relief. ‘You’re here―?’ 

Hal ignores the implied question. He should _know_ who he is, and if he doesn’t, that just makes it all the funnier, doesn’t it? 

They end up in one of those peculiar crannies common to places of public entertainment, the kind that give Health and Safety the screaming ab-dabs. This place was supposed to have been a staff toilet, but it never got plumbed in properly, Francis says in explanation as redundant as the lavatorial fittings, so they use it to store excess dry goods. It locks from the inside, that’s the handy thing. Hal releases an inane bubble of mirth and backs him up against a battlement of boxes marked _Lavazza_ , resolving never to have a latte in this fucking place again, no matter how bad the hungover craving for the comfort of warm milk. 

Hal’s height forces them into a weird Hays Code pose, Francis’s neck bent back over the edge of the topmost box, and as a consequence their first kiss is absurdly polite. Francis chortles, a disconcerting baby-bird noise. Hal’s passed the giggly stage, which never lasts long for him if it happens at all. He pushes the spillikins t-shirt up into Francis’s armpits. That’s better, a tapering strip of abdominal muscle of the sort destined never to achieve the condition of six-pack, those plump pecs, _adorable_ , nipples hard as trivets―rivets―something knobbly and industrial that Hal doesn’t know anything about, anyway. He pinches the left one, hard, producing a gulped _fuck, yeah_ , and shoves his other hand down into the waistband of the unfortunate jeans to feel Francis’s arse. Francis makes to pull his t-shirt over his head. 

‘Leave it,’ Hal snaps. He’d been enjoying that―that slightly _pinioned_ look, but now it seems boring and tawdry. The scenario is exactly that of a lacklustre porn video, he thinks, the sort that tries to compensate for the visible ennui of the principals by piling on trope after trope. He pictures the website caption for it, a torrent of specialist and uninformative adjectives. 

‘You all right, mate?’ 

‘Yeah, why shouldn’t I be? Those jeans are ghastly―’ Francis grins fondly at the toff-speak, as Hal had meant he should, he’s back in control, it’ll be all right, ‘―let’s get you out of them.’ 

This bit is quite good: Francis’s cock is springy, broad and blunt; he’s clearly, and a little despite himself, flattered by Hal’s enthusiastic drop to his knees. Hal’s keen enough on giving head that he mostly manages to keep his thoughts from wandering to modern mutations of the English class system or how diabolical a mind you'd need to design linoleum in those complex tessellations of mauve and sage. The sweet, acrid musk of his groin pleases him; his fingers stroking, then winding into Hal’s hair, so poignantly _patronising_ , yes, lovely. He makes a necessarily wordless accommodation to suggest that his face is on the whole amenable to being fucked. Before long, Francis comes with a small, strained yowl and the customary staccato obscenities. Hal stands up and stops them with a kiss; there’s a tender, woozy interval of approximate fondling, which is the smoke starting to wear off a bit, he supposes, and during which he discovers his shirt discarded and his fly opened. 

Francis starts to get hard again; Hal’s undeniably turned on by that, though in general he finds sexual arousal a slightly disagreeable sensation. Increased heart-rate, skin flushed and clammy, tight chest, urgent need for release: it’s panic by any other name, isn’t it? The weed doesn’t fucking help. He wonders if this is what his father feels like all the time. It probably isn’t particularly helpful to think about Dad and his anxiety disorder just at the moment, though. He grabs Francis’s shoulders, twists him around and bends him over a lower pile of boxes. Assorted condiment sachets. At two hundred sachets to a package, say sixty-four packages to a box, six boxes stacked two by three, that’s seventy-six thousand eight hundred sachets of mayonnaise and ketchup and salad cream and HP brown and vinegar and mustard (English and French)― _Jesus Christ_ , this kip could do with a firm stocktaking hand. 

Francis is breathing stertorously, his shoulders heaving. _Oh, fuck yeah_. They lack at least one of the necessaries for Hal to fuck him, which he’s glad of, because fucking people is a massive cost-benefit drain. He parts his arse-cheeks, which really are superb, more interesting in their ogee symmetry than what lies between. Still, he pays that some attention with a spit-moistened thumb, considers a casual rimjob and decides against, it could only create expectations, gets his cock out and tosses off over the magnificent globes. 

It takes Francis a moment or two to realise he’s had his lot, by which time Hal is buttoning his shirt. He gets to his feet and straightens up slowly, uncurling his spine in a manner Hal is obliged to acknowledge as graceful. He’s almost unrecognisable as the ditherer behind the bar. Hal brandishes a handful of rough blue paper towels from a burst packet on the floor. 

‘You should clean―’ 

Francis looks at him, without hostility but steadily. 

‘I’ll―um―come here.’ 

As he does, Francis says, ‘ _Nostalgie de la boue._ ’ The accent is correct, in the way that Hal reluctantly accepts is necessary for effective communication in France (though he still resents having to turn himself into a temporary Frenchman) but considers punctiliously affected in deploying a tag. ‘You know what it means?’ 

‘Yeah. If you mean me, you could just say slumming.’ 

‘It ain’t the same.’ 

He’s right, it’s not. ‘In any case, the thought has occurred to me once or twice, you know.’ 

‘No, it hasn’t. Not really. Not how it makes other people feel.’ 

‘I’m not responsible for other people’s feelings. Your soul’s your own. There you go.’ He slaps the boy’s arse in emphasis. 

‘ _Soul._ What the fuck do you know about it?’ Francis pulls down his t-shirt and reaches for the deplorable jeans. 

This is not a conversation Hal is interested in having. People have tried to have it with him before. His Dad. Dad’s political cronies. His brother John. Ed, in his way. The only person close to him who is not interested in having this conversation is Jack. Perhaps he should have sex with Jack. He shudders, he is fascinated to note, not entirely with disgust. 

‘Well,’ he says, ‘it’s been perfectly delightful, but―’ 

Francis has only one leg in his trousers, which is probably, at this moment, all that’s saving Hal from physical assault. No, there’s Hal’s four inches or so on him in reach, Army Cadets and OTC, and a certain wiry implacability that no-one ever expects someone as tall and scrawny as Hal to have. And the automatic deference of people of Francis’s social class to people of his, of course, at its inhibiting height just when they think they’re being most defiant. He looks charming, like a cross little Highland bull. Hal _would_ quite enjoy a scuffle to finish things off, but just then someone not very far off on the other side of the door roars, ‘Fraaaaancis!’ 

‘Split shift,’ Francis mutters in unrequested explanation, jamming his feet into broken-down trainers. ‘Hang on!’ He scrambles for the door. 

Ed’s waiting for Hal in the bar. 

‘Where the fuck have you been, Tory boy? Turn on your fucking phone.’ 

‘Must have died. I didn’t notice. Out having a smoke with the kitchen porters. Actually,’ he fingered the bag in his pocket, ‘one of them gave me―well, there’s enough for one decent joint left, anyway. No idea why. Funny bloke. Works the bar sometimes. We might have a bit of a laugh with him, if he’s on again tonight.’ 

‘What? You mean―’ Ed tilts his head unmistakably. 

‘Nah―not _that_. Just―look here, this is what we do―’


End file.
